Suchergebnisse

International territorial conflicts are frequently characterized by political recourse to narratives of nationalist entitlement, stifling conflict resolution by raising domestic audience costs and discursively limiting bargaining flexibility. Conflict incentivizes elite employment of such claims precisely because security threats and fear of violence heighten popular resonance of adversarial collective identity frames. This article argues, however, that consensus mobilization behind nationalist territorial claims is highly dependent upon the particular narratives elites select to justify them. Employing controlled individual-level experiments administered to diverse populations in Israel, it demonstrates how exposure to competing narratives of homeland, security, economic prosperity, and settlement impacts support for control of East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank. Although indivisible claims to 'United Jerusalem', the Golan, and West Bank settlement blocs and strategic highlands are generally considered popular consensus issues in Israel, only particular narratives trigger consensus mobilization behind each. Some narratives even encourage conciliatory policy attitudes against such appeals. As a democracy embroiled in multiple enduring territorial disputes, analysis of the Israeli case contributes to understanding of the limits and political consequences of elite rhetoric. Demonstrating the affinity between narrative frames and popular policy preferences, this article also lends insight into the intersubjective beliefs that drive mass support for nationalist territorial claims.

How and under what conditions do religious factors explain the militarization of interstate territorial disputes? We argue that inconclusive findings in previous studies stem from inadequate consideration of the interaction between challenger state religiosity and the domestic constituencies actually invested in religiously salient territorial claims. To address this gap, this article differentiates between secular regimes, which provide minimal support to their state's dominant religion and religious regimes, which strongly support their dominant religion. It also considers narrowly salient coreligionist populations, which appeal almost exclusively to religious audiences, versus broadly salient contested sacred sites, which appeal to much broader constituencies. We argue that the interaction between these two factors produces very different patterns of interstate conflict behavior. Secular regimes avoid escalation over narrowly salient religious claims because they do not depend upon religious constituents for support. However, they lack the necessary religious legitimacy to manage outbidding challenges that frequently arise over more broadly salient claims. Religious regimes, by contrast, enjoy high domestic religious legitimacy, enabling more peaceful engagement with broadly salient religious claims. Yet their political dependence upon religious constituencies incentivizes conflict when disputes involve narrowly salient religious claims. We test these propositions utilizing original data on the religious salience of interstate territorial disputes in the post-Cold War era, from 1990 to 2010. Analyses, using both dichotomous and continuous measures of regime religiosity, confirm these inferences and contribute to highly nuanced understandings of how state-religion policy and religious salience interact to influence patterns of interstate violence.

To what extent do white nationalists influence Congressional representative conservatism? Although ethnocentrism, out-group prejudice, and racial threats strongly predict American political attitudes and voter behavior, how social movements predicated on these beliefs shape political outcomes is rarely considered. We argue that white nationalist activities significantly contribute to the radicalization of Congressional representatives' policy agendas in a manner non-reducible to demographic or socioeconomic conditions. By mobilizing white voters against racial status threats, they indirectly compel politicians to adopt more radically conservative agendas. We quantitatively test these propositions by examining distributions of white nationalist groups in the American South against Congressional representative conservatism from 2010–2017. Analyses reveal that white nationalists indeed appear to significantly impact representative radical conservatism, even controlling for numerous factors commonly theorized to explain their rise. In doing so, we contribute to emerging insights on the political influence of the radical right on the contemporary American conservative "mainstream."